The 2001-02 league MVP with Montreal, Theodore evened his record at
2-2-1 with his best start of the season, losing a bid for his first
Colorado shutout on Dany Heatley's goal
midway through the third.

Theodore will return to the Bell Centre on Saturday night for his first
game against the Canadiens since he was traded to the Avalanche for David Aebischer in a deadline deal on March 8.

"Obviously it's going to be special," Theodore said. "I was in that
organization for 12 years. It was a great experience for me so it's
going to be fun and exciting to go back to Montreal."

Colorado dominated the second period, outshooting Ottawa 20-7 after the
teams traded scoring chances in the first.

"I thought that was our best period all year," Avalanche coach Joel
Quenneville said.

Sakic scored his third goal of the season midway through the second to
open the scoring. Richardson got his third with a short-handed effort
with 3:16 left in the period to put the Avalanche up by two.

"Personally and as a team I'm really happy with the way the guys
played," Theodore said. "You saw that as a team we bounced back right
back after that first period. We played really hard and it's fun as a
goalie to see that you know that your team is going to work hard in
front of you."

Heatley, who had a team-record 50 goals last season, got his first of
the season 9:45 into the third when he took a pass from Jason Spezza and fired a wrist shot that went in off Theodore's glove.

The Senators, who went 29-9-3 last season at Scotiabank Place, have lost
each of their four home games.

"We wouldn't have guessed that was going to happen at the start of the
year but we definitely haven't given ourselves as good a chance as we
should to win games," Senators defenseman Wade Redden said. "Usually we're really good at this,
especially at home. I don't know what it is. It just seems like we've
got guys doing five different things sometimes all over the ice and
until we get back to playing together, it's going to be the same thing."

Ottawa's Martin Gerber stopped 34 shots
in his first start since a 4-3 loss to Buffalo on Oct. 7.

The Senators went 0-for-3 on the power play and have not scored in their
last 31 attempts with the man advantage. Ottawa's power play is 1-for-33
overall in six games.

Colorado's power play also came up short, going 0-for-6. The Avalanche
are 0-for-17 with the man advantage on the road.

Sakic opened the scoring 10:48 into the second, redirecting Andrew
Brunette's pass from behind the net from the edge of the crease beyond
Gerber despite being surrounded by Redden and his defense partner,
Andrej Meszaros, and center Mike Fisher.

"We were running around there for what felt like 10 minutes in the
second, just scrambling," Redden said. "Someone would get the puck and
we'd just give it back to them, or we wouldn't get it out. They were
working us down low and finally it broke. It was just a bang-bang play
for Joe to put it in."

Richardson made it 2-0 during Ottawa's first power play opportunity when
he beat Gerber with a shot into the top right corner.

Notes

Theodore, who has 23 career shutouts, has not blanked an opponent
since Feb. 28, 2004, against Carolina with Montreal, a span of 60
games.

Senators D Joe Corvo made his season debut. Corvo, who signed
as a free agent with Ottawa on July 1 after he had 14 goals and 26
assists with Los Angeles last season, missed Ottawa's first five games
because of a broken foot.

Rick Middleton and Gary Leeman are tied for the longest
scoring drought from the start of a season by a player who scored at
least 50 goals the previous season, according to the Elias Sports
Bureau. Middleton didn't score through his first seven games of
1982-83, and Leeman matched that in 1990-91.

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